Mickey Wedding & Pet Peeves

We will make this week's blog short and a little sour..... Is there something you see in your line of work that bugs the fool out of you? We all do I'm sure. In cake decorating we all start as beginners and I never judge those people. If you charge money, and sometimes a lot of money for a cake then it should be well executed. Piping should be neat and consistent. I'm not the best at piping so I use a small paint brush to even out and blend in my lines. Sometimes, I need to scrape things off and start again . One of the most popular borders are fondant pearls. If you will pay attention some decorators don't use the right product (it needs to be partially modeling chocolate or Fondarific so it will harden in the cooler) and stretch them out when unmoulding or applying them to the cake. It's a minor thing to most, but a pearl border that isn't rounded pearls is not clean work to me.

Last pet peeve is disintegrated dragees. Whether pearl, silver or gold those little balls cannot be applied and then put in the fridge. They break down and loose their sheen all together. This really does stink because you can't apply them ahead of time. I'll give you two things that I do. First, I put them on ahead of time when the icing is a little soft so that they will not just sit on top of the buttercream. If the cake gets room temperature and those dragees aren't pushed in a little, they will slide down the cake. Trust me, we stayed almost until a wedding started just gently pushing those things in before they all slide down. Did you catch that I just told you I do what I said you shouldn't? Well at the last minute, I take the bad dragees out and add fresh ones. Yes it takes more time, but I don't have to measure last minute or get a cake soft before adding the last minute. Oh! Get a gem/rhinestone setter for applying these and not leaving tweezer marks. They are just a little wad of wax on the end of a stick. It is easier to pick them up and apply them (but not removing, stick to tweezers for that). Yeah! I got those things out of my system!

Walnut Hill Fresh Flower Wedding

 

How could I ever make flowers this pretty!?!?  I arrive at the venue, Walnut Hill Farm, and the florist has left me the MOST gorgeous bunch of flowers!  Ranunculus, Peonies, perfect roses, hydrangeas and some lambs ear for greenery.   I was in love with all of them!!!  Here are some "professional baker tips" for the week.

1,  Allow yourself PLENTY of time when fresh flowers go on the cake.  If the florist is gone, it's up to you to finish the cake (my opinion and also I agree to this ahead of time).

2.  Allow wiggle room for the type of flowers and their arrangement in your contract.  This cake was supposed to be all hydrangea.  You can see how many I had and I could not have achieved this look with a small amount or with one kind.  I still get sick-at-my-stomach when I knowingly deviate from the contract.  I never want to be the vendor that blames in on another vendor.  "They didn't leave me the right kind or enough".  I should have called the florist and emailed them a sketch/size of the cake they knew what to plan.  I ask the bride to give the extra copy I provide to the florist, but that doesn't seem to happen

3.  If a customer wants to "float their cake on a bed of flowers" this is the easiest way to do it.  Just allow for a bigger board and stick them in the cake.  You could put a smaller piece of Styrofoam under the full cake for the flowers are truly UNDER the cake, but that is not nearly as stable.  Charge extra for that!

4.  Be friendly to everyone at the venue, even when you are stressed out and in a hurry.

It took me a full hour to put all these flowers on the cake, while at the same time fielding questions from the wedding party that was mulling about and grabbing a little girl's hand right before she poked it right into the cake.  I don't want to ever be unfriendly because people remember rude.  But don't you think that very early guests should give a vendor the space to do their job?  They are always on us like we are on a cake show, asking "is that fondant? I hate fondant!" or "how did you do that?".  Like that's an easy questions in the allotted time.  It would be nice if we had nothing else to do but to visit with guests and answer questions, but vendors just don't have that luxury.  Our work, food-flowers-cakes-venue-photography, is very time sensitive and we have to get in and get out.  So please don't think us rude.  We are really sweet :)

Bakers Gotta Bake!

When do you not call your baker?  The day before the wedding!  Or the day of the wedding!  We had both happen recently and just wanted to tell you why it's not a good idea.  Toward the end of the month I pull all my orders for the next month and read through them.  I make a list of supplies I need, make sure no payments are needed, make sure everything is very clear (since it may have been months since I booked the cake) and make a task list for each week.  This is a best practice, even if I don't always do it, but I try!  If I'm really on top of my paperwork and cakes, I will email a bride a short note confirming the delivery date, place and time as well as any questions I may have.  Now this is the time for questions!
Here is an example of an email to send a brides a couple of weeks in advance of the wedding.

Your wedding day is almost here!  Please read over your contract, which is attached, and ask any questions or advise me of any changes that you need to make.  Here are the delivery details:
Date:  (include day of the week, like Saturday June 14, 2015)
Venue location:
Time we will be there with the cakes:

Please provide the name and phone number for the person that is going to return the cake stands the week after the wedding.

If you have a topper, please make sure it is at the venue and on the cake table.

Have you made arrangement for the florist to have the necessary flowers at the venue?

Brides that don't have a planner are typically more stressed shortly before the big day.  GOOD wedding planners will confirm the above details well before the wedding and often email all the vendors a list of all the other vendors and a time line.  If a bride has family help them out, they need to make a list of vendors, their contact info  and the expected delivery times.

We had a sister call us a 10pm the night before the wedding.  She was leaving a message with very inaccurate information when I picked up the phone.  She knew nothing other than I was making a cake.  She was panicking that they had been calling and calling and sent me several emails and I had not answered.  I was in the kitchen all day next to the phone.  I checked my email at Noon that day, but not since then because it's FRIDAY AND BAKERS GOTTA BAKE!  If I had sent the bride an email the week before , this would not have happened.

Then Saturday, the day of the wedding, a planner called to ask me when I was delivering the cakes.  Really? The day of the wedding?  What kind of planning is that?  We got to the venue and the bride had forgotten items for both the bridal and groom's cake!.  It's going to happen because they have so much on their minds, that's why GREAT wedding planners are awesome!

So if you are a baker, send that letter two weeks ahead of time!  If you are a bride, get a planner or at least make a really good "day of" list!

Piped Lace Wedding Cake

I'm going to post a little quick entry today.  It's the first week of May and I have a BUNCH of cakes to work on!  We are getting a lot more requests for colored wedding cakes and I think that's great!  This a khaki color which isn't always the easiest color to achieve.  I sure wish I had one of the paint color mixing machines at Home Depot!

I used an Evil Cake Genius lace stencil and the piped an outline with a #1 tip.  I really like the look of the lace with that extra step.  The people at Evil Cake suggest putting a piece of tulle fabric  on the cake with the stencil.  I guess it's just to have a more realistic texture.  I personally don't think it's worth the effort, but that's just my taste.  My tip for the week is to add your edible pearls and silver dragees to your cake a few house before the cake is due.  If you put them on the day before they will break down and not be pretty.  OK, bonus tip!  Only make your pearl borders with Fondarific or modeling chocolate (or add 50% to your fondant).  The fat in those products will let you put the pearls in the freezer for just a couple of minutes and they will harden.  Then unmold them and they won't get all stretched out and disfigure.  When you see a really pretty cake with stretched pearls, it makes me a little sad that the decorator didn't know this tiny thing that makes a big difference.

Chattanooga Lace Wedding Cake!

Day of the Dead Wedding Cake

I made this wedding cake back in March... MARCH!  You have no idea how hard it was to sit on these pictures so that I could save them for this Halloween post!  NO IDEA!!

This couple was a baker's dream couple.  Super nice, easy to work with, and enjoyed thinking WAY outside the box.  This whole wedding was Day of the Dead themed, which is a celebration and remembrance for loved ones that have passed on.  It is a huge celebration in Mexico and other countries.

I had such a fun time making this cake.  And I think the best part of it all was during the delivery, someone walked into the reception site and yelled "Holy Sh*t, is that the cake?!"  When the wedding cake in question is purple and lime green with dancing sombrero-ed skeletons and a huge skull tier I think that's the best reaction you can hope for!

What are you doing for Halloween?  We are going out with some friends and we are all dressing up like characters from the Wizard of Oz.  Doesn't that sound like a hoot?

Domed Wedding Cake with Lace Doilies

Sometimes we are lucky enough to have a bride that really has a vision. They know they want a cake to blend into all the reception decor as well as the venue. For this particular event the venue was the Tivoli Theater in Chattanooga, TN. There are dark red curtains, gold and silver fixtures and lots of pretty marble. The bride chose darker shades of orange and purple to accent her Fall wedding.

It is really a challenge to add a lot of color to a bridal cake while ensuring it doesn't look like a fancy birthday cake. A baker can add tons of tonal details and the cake rarely looks busy, but color really changes things.  The "easy" part of this cake was the bottom stencil and the drop strings. For the bottom tier we used the "princess lace" stencil from Designer Stencils. This is the largest design in the set.

My tip here is that we air brushed the gold while the stencil was still on and in place. We also cheated a little and used a little swag marker for all the drop strings. It keeps things so consistent and easy. The cake is all buttercream with a little fondant for accents.

There is a cake all over Pinterest that shows a beautiful cake with a domed top tier and the same lace doily design. When the bride presented me the picture, I thought "holy moly that is a lot of intricate piping!" and therefore a bunch of money. She was on a budget and I wanted to help. I got so lucky and found the the lace was all done with a SugarVeil mat and SugarVeil.

I found the same mat on Etsy for a lot less money that Sugar Veil was charging. It worked great! After I removed the lace, I dry brushed it with gold luster dust and immediately applied it to the dome. It really did cut down the work while still looking like we had done a lot of hand work. I was really happy with the final product and the Bride loved it too!

Khaki Wedding Cake in Trenton

This past weekend I made this wedding cake for a sweet couple getting married in Trenton, GA.  This couple was a little older than my average wedding couple, but they were super nice and allowed me a little leeway with their cake for the big day!

Our color scheme for this wedding was khaki, white, and gold.  White is an easy color to bring to the party; here we used white in the borders, piping, and in the roses I got from wholesalesugarflowers.com.  A little gold goes a long way on a wedding cake and can be easily overdone.  I used a cosmetic sponge to lightly edge each of the roses with gold luster dust.

I had a rough time getting the right color combination to get that perfect khaki color.  Khaki is WAY different than ivory.  My final recipe included mixing in brown, green, and just a smidge of purple coloring into my white buttercream.

Happily Ever After Wedding Cake

I really liked doing this wedding cake.  The couple were fun and not afarid to bring some color to their otherwise traditional wedding cake.  Not only was the bow hot pink, but the inside of the cake was pink strawberry with hot pink cream cheese icing!

You can click on the cake for a larger picture, but the piping reads "And They Lived Happily Ever After".  What a great way to start your fairytale life!  To do the piping, I started by printing out the wording on paper with the printer's settings changed to "mirror image".  Then I used a #1 tip to pipe faintly over the wording onto a sheet of parchment paper using royal icing.  Once I finished piping, I carefully lifted the parchment paper, flipped it over, and placed it on my cake.  That gave me a nice outline that I used to pipe over again using royal icing.  Once the royal icing had dried I then went back and painted the words with Nu Silver.

There is one other thing I wanted mention, and it applies to all cakes.  If the bride has a topper she wants to use on her cake, make sure you at least see it before the wedding day.  This bride had a cute carriage topper, but it was on a large base.  It hung off the sides of the initial 5" top tier, and it didn't look right.  Luckily, I caught it in time to rebake the top as a 6" cake.  And Wilton cake toppers have a nasty habit of securing their toppers to the box with lots and lots of screws!! So make sure you always carry a screwdriver in your emergency kit!

Thank you all so much for stopping by and visiting my little blog.  I'll leave you with a little closer shot of that piping, just so you can see it better.

 

  

Copper Flower Wedding at the Hunter Museum

I have done quite a lot of wedding cakes in my career, but this is the first time I have had a request for metallic flowers.  But I must admit, If this is a new trend, I could really get on board with it!

This four tiered wedding cake is covered in buttercream with several small piped band going around each tier.  The bride wanted orchids with fat petals, so we worked together and finally settled on Vanda orchids, which the bride really loved.

I airbrushed each of the orchids with copper luster dust and then painted them with chocolate brown centers and white petal highlights.I then cascaded the flowers down the front of the cake.

We delivered this cake to the Hunter Museum in Chattanooga, TN.  It was our first trip to the venue and it was absolutely lovely.  Those artsy copper orchids fit in so well with the venue and the bride's decor.

Thanks to all of you that stop by and read my little old blog.  As always, I appreciate your comments!